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samba on ubuntu issues

Posted: Tue Jul 11, 2006 12:40 am
by Burrito
I can't seem to get samba to work correctly:

this is what I have done:

sudo apt-get install samba
sudo apt-get install smbfs
sudo smbpasswd -a burrito

then typed and confirmed my password

then in /etc/samba/smbusers I added this line:
burrito = burrito
I also tried
burrito = "burrito"
and (thinking maybe I had to have a different name:
burrito = burritos

next in: /etc/samba/smb.conf I uncommented this line

security = user

and added this line right below it:

username map = /etc/samba/smbusers

finally I added this to the end of my smb.conf file:


[music]
comment = music folder
path = /var/www/music
public = yes
writable = yes
valid users = burrito
create mask = 0777
directory mask = 0777
force user = nobody
force group = nobody


I also tried it w/o the 'valid users' directive

after saving my file I ran 'testparm' and received this for my output

burrito@tacostand:/etc/samba# sudo testparm
Load smb config files from /etc/samba/smb.conf
Processing section "[printers]"
Processing section "[print$]"
Processing section "[music]"
Loaded services file OK.
WARNING: passdb expand explicit = yes is deprecated
Server role: ROLE_STANDALONE
Press enter to see a dump of your service definitions


which looks ok to me...save the one minor warning.

I then restarted my samba services and tried to map a drive from my windows xp machine adn get this error:

"The mapped network drive could not be created because the following error has occurred: An extended error has occurred"

I'm at a complete loss of what to try next, can anyone shed some light on this please?

Posted: Tue Jul 11, 2006 1:11 am
by Charles256
have you tried installing from the synpatec package manager instead of manually?

Posted: Tue Jul 11, 2006 9:11 am
by Burrito
nope, I'm not even sure what that is.

in any case I think I'm going to have to modify the smb.conf file though correct?

Posted: Tue Jul 11, 2006 10:00 am
by Todd_Z
Charles256 wrote:have you tried installing from the synpatec package manager instead of manually?
The package manager is just a gui front end for the apt-get commands, nothing would be different if you went through the gui than if you use the cli.

Posted: Tue Jul 11, 2006 10:28 am
by Burrito
ahh...I didn't even install the gui, I guess that's why I didn't see it.

back on topic: does anyone have any ideas why my samba isn't working?

Posted: Tue Jul 11, 2006 1:09 pm
by Charles256
figured he might see a more updated version or something :-D

Posted: Tue Jul 11, 2006 2:19 pm
by Chris Corbyn
Charles256 wrote:figured he might see a more updated version or something :-D
Nope, same manager. FYI `apt-cache search samba' would list the packages matching samba.

Posted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 11:33 am
by Burrito
well I broke down and installed the GUI, and tried sharing a folder from within Gnome.

it worked.

I then checked what it did to smb.conf and the only diff between what it did and what I did was it didn't have the 'force user = nobody' nor the 'force user = group' options.

I changed that on the folder I tried to share...and guess what, it worked. I then looked at the samba logs to see if they would show me anything and they did, they said something about not having a group 'nobody'. I was under the impression that 'nobody' meant 'nobody' and I didn't need to have a 'group' for that. apparently I was wrong.

can any of you explain the group system to me and tell me about 'nobody'?

Posted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 12:21 pm
by Chris Corbyn
Burrito wrote:well I broke down and installed the GUI, and tried sharing a folder from within Gnome.

it worked.

I then checked what it did to smb.conf and the only diff between what it did and what I did was it didn't have the 'force user = nobody' nor the 'force user = group' options.

I changed that on the folder I tried to share...and guess what, it worked. I then looked at the samba logs to see if they would show me anything and they did, they said something about not having a group 'nobody'. I was under the impression that 'nobody' meant 'nobody' and I didn't need to have a 'group' for that. apparently I was wrong.

can any of you explain the group system to me and tell me about 'nobody'?
"nobody" is just a group and a user on most linux systems. The privileges for these are next to none so processes often run under the user group in order to lower the risk in the event of exploits etc. It's just a logical name to use for something like that. My apache server runs as "nobody".

Glad you got it working anyway :)

Posted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 12:40 pm
by Burrito
so should 'nobody' be set up by default?